The beginning of love is to let those we love be perfectly themselves, and not to twist them to fit our own image. Otherwise we love only the reflection of ourselves we find in them.

Francis of Assisi on 31st Street. Merton began routinely praying but discontinued the practice after leaving the school. During his initial months of schooling Merton begged his father to remove him.

O. T. Merton was a keen proponent of interfaith understanding.